Greece and Egypt Dec 2000

Lemme prattle about my travails to the legendary land of the pharoahs - Egypt while I've time...
I came back to work on the second day of the official third millenium, though most folks preferred to celebrate the occasion an year earlier!
A hectic vacation since we didn't want to miss anything of interest either in Greece or in Egypt' cos it might be a while before I go back there! I slept for 14.5 hours at a stretch as a direct consequence of that...from 5 in the evening on the 1st till half past 7 in the morning on the 2nd jan! Probably I hadn't slept so long till date except when ill.
My jaunt began on the 20th of december......the day we flew to Athens. Athens is very similar to bangalore if you compare the roads and pollution. Of course only cars and huge bikes abound the roads unlike the lunas and hero puchs, remember from Mysore . It's considered to be one of the safest and most affordable cities in the world. I realised this to be true when I paid for the youth hostels which cost just about 200 rupees for a night (real cheap for European standards! It's about 400 to 600 rupees elsewhere in Europe....I guess the price in youth hostels and the price of a burger menu at McDonald's can help you gauge the cost of living in any european city! The first day was spent strolling around the Acropolis....the name given to a small hillock which houses some ancient monuments...The Acropolis and its monuments, its history and the myths that are connected with it are rightly the pride of this city. As an afterthought, this is where Yanni performed live before coming to perform in Agra...'yanni at the acropolis'! Since we reached Athens only in the evening on the 20th, we just roamed the streets to familiarize ourselves. The next day we took a bus to Olympia which is some 350 kms away from Athens. The bus journey was legendary since it drove the whole way along the coast! Olympia, the birthplace of the olympics, played host to the first ancient games the year 776 B.C. Strangely, I realized that I would have seen two of the ancient seven wonders of the world by this vacation. The huge statue of Zues who was considered the God of Gods inside the temple of Zeus in Olympia is among the seven wonders of the ancient world!! Though today nothing remains at the site of the old temple except rocks and debris, the foundation of the buildings, and fallen columns. But the olympic flame is still lit once in four years in the ancient stadium and carried by foot to the location of the games...USA(Atlanta) last year!!! Weather was quite shitty in Olympia...the only day we experienced bad weather in the whole trip...and the hostel we stayed wasn't equipped with heaters also...had to shiver inside blankets for that night sadly! The next day was much better, sunny and bright...We took a bus to Delphi which is located to the north of Athens (150 kms from Athens). It was actually an organised tour which cost us about 8500 Drachma each... 60 guilders approx. Good fun since an english speaking guide accompanied us and kept us awake during the journey with her chatter. In antiquity, Delphi was regarded as the centre of the world. The Temple of Apollo where sat the famous oracle who presumably answered any question (except those 3rd sem Network analysis questions sadly!), the sacred Corycian Cave, and the Castalian Spring are all located here. It's really picturesque with the whole town nestled between snow clad mountains. The site itself wasn't too cold anyway and it was also free to enter! 'cos all monuments' entrances are free on sundays in Greece in winter! :-)
We had some cooll vegetarian Greek food in a comfortable restaurant which didn't cost us the world later in the evening. I don't remember the names of the dishes though! The next day we visited the temple of Poseidon which is located in Cape Sunion...the tip of Greece before the Meditarranean sea starts. The temple itself was closed for Christmas though. But the site itself was worth the journey since it's located on a hill surrounded by the Aegian sea and it was quite a view! The same night, we took the flight to Cairo which arrived at around 5 in the morning in Cairo.
Ofcourse I didn't feel any different to walk on yet another continent except for the heat! It was quite amazing to notice that the whole country thrives on tourism and the 'Baksheesh' which results from it as a direct consequence! Even the immigration controls guy who stamps my passport expected me to tip him a few pounds!
And then the taxi drivers who were freely roaming inside the airport...smartly speaking English ( with knowledge of just the right sentences in English and no more!..I realised this later) and pleading you to make their day! After much haggling, we settled on a fare which we thought was cheap only to realise the next day that we had paid too much! We had rooms booked in Carlton hotel...listed as a 3 star hotel on the web with pictures of a pool and all...but amazingly, the rooms were quite dirty and the pool turned out to be water sump....we had to change twice before getting decent rooms! We had notions that with our knowledge of urdu, we can manage Arabic...but not a single word match between the languages probably! Booking tickets to Luxor was extremely tough without speaking arabic...try telling "6 return tickets to Luxor by the night train with sleeper coaches" in any foreign language!! But we did meet a guy ...a travel agent actually who booked tickets for us...of course after we made a deal with him for a trip to the pyramids!
The next day, we took an organised tour to the pyramids....hiring taxis or taking the local buses and trains are extremely cheap compared to the organised tours....but they are too slow!! The train literally takes 4 hours to cover 29 kms...snails move faster, probably! The first sight of the pyramids is truly amazing...they are huge to say the least. I always imagined them to be big structures...but never could gauge their real size...chamundi betta-ne each pyramid! We took a camel ride to visit the pyramids..there are 3 of them in Giza including the massive pyramid of Khufu ( another of the seven wonders) and spaced within an area of probably 3 sq, kms. Riding a camel is fun; especially the mounting and dimounting. Visitors are limited to 150 per day to enter the great pyramid…we weren't so lucky since you got to buy tickets early in the morning. We did enter one of the smaller pyramids which itself was quite claustrophobic and suffocating. It's amazing how the ancient Egyptians wasted so much man power to bury just one pharoah! Our tour included a visit to the stepped pyramids at Saqqara also which is about 18 kms away from Giza. This is older than the pyramids in Giza and is more than 5000 years old. Ofcourse, now, it's almost crumbling and even a small earthquake should shatter it. But sincerely these monuments would have been much better preserved if they existed in Europe or America 'coz even today for a few pounds baksheesh to the caretaker, visitors are allowed to climb or pluck a small stone off the pyramids as a souvenir!! The entrance fees to any of the monuments are almost prohibitive to tourists on budget!!
Though the per capita income is quite less in Egypt, the entrance fees are amazingly high! They do have much cheaper rates for locals though. The same night we took a train to Luxor which is towards the south of Egypt...650 kms away. Surprisingly, the second class compartments were quite comfortable and the train was fast too! It took about 9 hours to cover the distance. The hotel in Luxor was much better with cleaner rooms and a cool host (owner) who had travelled the world while he was young and gave us some valuable advice on what to see, where to buy, how much to pay etc. He also served us some excellent vegetarian food for real cheap prices. We stayed for 3 days in Luxor...which is supposed to be the greatest place of worship in history. It includes many singular temples, dedicated to Amun, his wife (Mut), and their son (Khonsu), the moon deity. Since the Arab conquest, it became known as 'al-Karnak': the Fort....more popularly called the Karnak temple now. We also attended the 'sound and light show' later in the evening which starts with a historical introduction about the foundation of the great city of Thebes and the birth of the Karnak temple. The show tells about the glorious achievements of some great Pharaohs like Amon...quite boring if you aren't interested in history! :-)
The great tombs of the kings and queens are situated on the west bank of the Nile (Luxor city and the karnak temples are on the east bank) and we visited these places the next day. Tickets are quite annoying since there is only one ticket office to all these places which is located about 2 kms away from the tombs...In case you feel like visiting a tomb for which you do not have a ticket, you'll have to travel back those 2 kms! And also, the ticket which lets you into the valley of kings also lets you visit only 3 tombs...there are atleast 20 tombs inside and if you decide to visit every single tomb, it might cost you anywhere between 65 to 70 US dollars!! The tomb of tutankhamen has a separate ticket priced at 40 Egyptian pounds which doesn't deserve so much...it's popular only because it was discovered intact. It's quite amazing if you consider the riches found inside this tomb in 1922 by Howard carter which are displayed in the Egyptian musuem in Cairo. It's even more amazing to imagine the amount of riches that could have been inside the tombs of great pharoahs like Ramses I or Seti I since Tutankhamen was just a boy prince who hardly ruled for half a decade before his death at the age of 19 years. We went on a small trek for about 2 hours in the Sahara which was fun. If peak winters can be so hot, summers must surely be dreadful in the Sahara. The valley of queens is another kilometer away and houses the tombs of the famous queens including the tomb of Hutshepsut who was the only female pharaoh to have ruled Egypt.
Her tomb was discovered very recently and looks very new. This was the exact place where 58 tourists were gunned down by fanatic Islamic fundamentalists (members of the jihad) in 1997! There's also a valley of priests nearby which houses the tombs of the builders and craftsmen and other noble men...we cudn't visit this place due to lack of time. For me, you have seen one tomb, you have seen them all! Later in the evening, we took a feluca ride down the river nile for about 3 hours. Felucas are sail boats with no motors and it's good fun to ride in them. We rode to a small island on the river Nile called the banana Island. It acquires it's name owing to the numerous banana plantations and mango grooves on it. We took the night train back to Cairo on the 30th night to reach on the 31st morning. We spent the whole day inside the Egyptian museum which houses all the artifacts gathered from different tombs and locations in Egypt. It also has an eerie room which contains all the mummies of the great pharaohs. There are even some mummies of animals...pets like cats and dogs and sacred animals like some sort of huge fish etc. There's a separate fee to visit the mummies room (40 pounds).
Later in the night, I went to the 'sound and light' show at the pyramids alone. This show also easily revels the show at the Karnak temple....The pyramids look fantastic with this lights! But we had to spend the passing of the year at the cairo airport since we were warned against strolling the streets that night by our hotel manager and also a few local friends I had made. You never know when or where those fanatics might strike!! There weren't any great parties scheduled in cairo anyway. For the muslims, december 26th was the start of the new year!
That's about it for now....WAKE UP!!

Pravas Pradhan, Kiran, Binita, Suveer and Me (Last two weeks of December 2000)